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This study investigates children's problem-solving activities during mobile learning in an outdoor summer camp setting. We designed a mobile application to support children on trails at a nature center to apply strategies for decision making about tree life cycles. We analyzed video records of 10 groups (9 dyads and 1 triad) of children (ages 9–12) using primarily a thematic qualitative analysis of learning episodes. We analyzed how children used problem-solving strategies to identify and capture the tree cycle with the help of mobile tablets. We found that our mobile learning experience and its external representations supported the following: (1) engagement in deep learning in the natural setting as evidenced by coordinating decisions with photographic evidence; (2) use of procedural or tactical strategies to approach the problem; and (3) use of real-time decision making strategies about tree life cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Meaningful discussion that facilitates reflective thinking can be initiated when learners raise thoughtful questions or provide critical feedback; however, generating effective questions requires a certain level of domain knowledge and metacognitive skills of the question-askers. We propose a peer-questioning scaffolding framework intended to facilitate metacognition and learning through scaffolding effective peer-questioning in online discussion. This framework assumes that novice students who lack domain and metacognitive knowledge can be scaffolded to generate meaningful interactions at an early stage of learning and the resulting peer-generated adaptive questions can facilitate learners’ metacognition. Thus, this study investigated the effects of providing online scaffolding for generating adaptive questions to peers during online small group discussion. A field experimental time-series control-group design was employed as a mixed model for the research design. Thirty-nine college students from an online introductory class on turfgrass management participated in the study. The findings revealed that the scaffolds were useful to increase the frequency of student questioning behavior during online discussion. For some students, the online guidance reportedly served as “a starting point” to generate questions when they had difficulty asking questions. However, the guidance did not improve the quality of questions and thus learning outcomes. The interview data indicated that peer-generated adaptive questions served a critical role in facilitating learner’s reflection and knowledge reconstruction. Further study should focus on the quality improvement of peer-generated questions while considering adaptive and dynamic forms of scaffolding and intermediate factors such as prior knowledge, metacognition, task complexity, and scaffolding type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a conceptual framework for scaffolding ill-structured problem-solving process using question prompts and peer interactions. We first examine the characteristics and processes of ill-structured problem solving, namely, problem representation, generating solutions, making justifications, and monitoring and evaluation. Then, we analyze each of the problem-solving processes with regard to its cognitive and metacognitive requirements, the issues and learning problems that might be encountered by students during each process, and the respective role of question prompts and peer interactions in scaffolding each process. Next, we discuss the role of the teacher in relation to the use of the two scaffolding techniques, and their limitations. Last, we discuss implications for instructional design by suggesting some specific guidelines, and made recommendations for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we examined how learners developed scientific explanations about light with the assistance of various technology-based scaffolds. The study emphasis was on scaffolding processes of reflection and articulation. We used a content-neutral software program (Progress Portfolio) to create the instructional scaffolds. A qualitative research design was used to investigate two pairs of prospective teachers in a science content course in engineering. Our findings suggested that the computer-based scaffolds used in our study were useful to support articulation, reflection, and revision of explanations, when certain conditions were met. A major theme of our findings relates to interacting effects among learner characteristics, teacher coaching, software scaffolding design, and task characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents information on a study which used an open-ended learning environment (OELE) for the examination of patterns of scientific understanding. Indepth look at the OELE; Methodology used to conduct the study; Results of the study.